


I Am Just a Simple Man, But I Simply Am...a Man

by Anonymous



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs a Hug, Depressed Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Gen, Internal Conflict, M/M, Rediscovering one's place in the world
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:26:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28972059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Left to his own devices and demons for 100 years, Booker struggles after returning to his family. His shame and depression haven't disappeared, and he has missed out on a lot. This is a story about him finding out if he still has a place within his family after his exile, and if so, what that role will be.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 13
Kudos: 38
Collections: anonymous





	1. Morning

The curtains blew gently up from the open window, causing a shimmer of sunlight to dart across Booker's closed eyelids. He blinked them open and watched as the morning light sparkled through the thin material. He lay there and waited for his brain to adjust to being suddenly awake. Any dreams he had been having were lost now, from his memories. For the best, probably. It was hard to explain, that dreams usually relegated how his mornings would be, and how strangely lost he felt when he didn't have that guidance. He honestly.. didn't really know how to feel.

He closed his eyes again and focused on listening to any sounds coming from outside the bedroom he was currently using. Sometimes it was hard to remember where he was when he woke up - so many decades of safe houses, temporary homes and hopping countries made it blur together into S _afe or Not safe, Hot or Cold climate, On a mission or Alone._ That last one had been unnecessary to consider for sometime - he was always alone. Sometimes he would let himself slip, when he was drowning in a pitiful mixture of sorrow and alcohol and had lost any thin grasp on his rules. He would let himself imagine that he was back with them (before, always before he had destroyed everything). That he could hear plates clinking, chairs squeaking, laughter. 

His eyes shot open as he remembered, finally, where and when he was. The house, now that he realized, was oddly quiet. His three current housemates were not known for being polite or understanding to those who preferred to sleep in. Unlike the usual noise, it was as if there was no one else in the house at all except for him. Not for the first time, a strange empty feeling settled in his brain, with the acceptance that it couldn't have been real. It was never a feeling of dread, when this darkness crept over him, just a numb understanding that his exile would never be over because he could never be forgiven. Not truly.

**"You are alone. There will never be anyone to share your pain, because you destroyed both families you were given. You have brought all your suffering on yourself. You deserve to wither and die alone, forever until eternity."**

He stared at the ceiling until his eyes unfocussed and breathed. The voice - thoughts? - that entered his mind had been his only companion for so long that he barely responded anymore. He knew what he thought of himself and how he felt. Was it really that strange that his mind should remind him of that as often as possible? He knew that sometimes these thoughts were unreasonable and that they did nothing to move him forward in doing penance or working toward redemption. But sometimes they were all he wanted to think, all he wanted to feel. To slowly lose himself in numb, unending pity and wallow in the thought that perhaps there was nothing that he could do anymore. Perhaps it was too late to fix anything, so why try? 

This, of course, never lasted as he would eventually shake himself awake from this hopeless stupor and viciously fight to get out of its comforting, suffocating grasp. He had work to do; he had not lost his family yet. Perhaps he could still return to them if he would only fight to do better, to try harder, to be a better man! He had bounced back and forth between these two mindsets for so many years it was like his life was a parody of itself. Hopeless depression and desperate hope swirling in an endless cycle, with him helplessly in the center, letting it continue as though he had no control over his own life. In truth, he didn't know how to stop it. He had never known how to stop himself when he realized that what he was doing would inevitably go terribly wrong. It had always seemed like, once the ball started rolling, he couldn't make it stop no matter if it was forgery, treason, apathy, or betrayal. He was a man who let life push him along and failed to take the controls because how on earth does anyone think he could make anything better? He knew he had made all those choices, but sometimes looking back, he couldn't remember why. He couldn't explain or understand himself how things had gone so wrong, so badly. He wondered, for an ageless time, why he had been chosen to live such a long extended life. Maybe he was the Cain to his family's goodness. Cursed to wander forever alone because he couldn't help but destroy everything he touched. His mere presence was a dark shadow that poisoned whatever it came into contact with and... oh, I guess he knew now what kind of day it was going to be today. 


	2. Will

See, the thing was, he had actually done this to himself. Quynh’s sudden return mere months after his banishment meant that the team had come back together much, much sooner than any of them had expected. Andy was so preoccupied afterwards, that Booker figured his presence had gone largely unnoticed by her. Quynh needed help - what else could possibly matter? It had been Nile who had really reached out to him then. Booker suspected she wanted some support from the only other person who might understand the awkwardness of being well acquainted via horrible nightmares with someone you had never even met. He and Nile did have some good days where he got to know her a little better and tried really, really hard to be as together for her as possible. She was such an incredible, strong and intelligent kid, but she was just that - so, so young. He knew she had some very difficult times ahead of her, and he wouldn’t be the one to help her through them. Better to have her learn to lean on the people who would be there for her when she needed them, then to start forming a bond with the one who couldn’t, and honestly shouldn’t.

Because the honest truth was, Booker was a mess. A twisted, ugly, broken mess of a man who had only been able to get his head out of the bottle long enough to realize that if he didn’t get some help for Quynh, she would just keep drowning. She had been so lost and confused about everything, swinging between wildly violent behavior and catatonic helplessness. He had done what he knew he had too, but that didn’t change anything about his sentence. One hundred years would give him time to put himself back together for them. To gut himself and rip out the selfishness, cowardice, hatred - the essence of who he had been his whole life and see if there was anything left to build back together into a simbalance of a person. He owed his team that - he owed Andy that. She wouldn’t be there to see it, but he would do whatever it took to return to them a much better, stronger man. A person they would be proud to have on their team. A man worthy of this life. So he had bid them his goodbyes and quietly slipped out to continue his exile on his own. He had been sure that was for the best, at the time, so sure he would be able to see those changes in himself when he returned. Heh, easier said than done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all the kudos and comments. You're all very kind. :)
> 
> Shorter chapter this time to get some backstory before we dive back into the present time.
> 
> Warnings in this chapter for a lot of negative thoughts. Booker is still in a very bad headspace, and it colors his perspective on everything that happens around him. He is very much seeing the world through his own depressed eyes.


	3. Arrive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Family's almost back together, but there might be some members who are having a hard time.

A crash of dishes startled Booker awake for the second time that morning. He had rolled over and buried himself back into the blankets in a weak attempt to delay having to start this day, sometime ago. It must have slightly worked because the sun had moved enough to throw his bed into shadows again and his previously absent roommates had apparently now returned from whatever shopping excursion they had deemed necessary that morning.

He could hear Nile protesting against something one of the others must have said, and Joe’s boisterous laughter could be heard in response. More dishes were being handled and if Booker guessed correctly, there would soon be smells wafting around the house in a clear invitation for him to join them. One he would probably... decline today. His brain felt like it was laying under layers of blankets with his body. Thoughts felt muffled and there was just - nothing. He didn’t particularly want to examine why today. He was content to let himself just be a body today. Thoughts were too sluggish to form, feelings were… Well, that went without saying. He’d decline trying to unwrap any of those on most days.

It had been four days since his long awaited reunion with his.. with the team. He’d made some good headway on himself, he had thought. He’d done some good things during the last century - making sure to involve himself in the lesser events of the world to avoid any unplanned run-ins with any of the others. There was always a need for strong hands and assistance somewhere in the world, and Booker had often found himself preferring to help people without them really taking notice. He had planned for so long how different he would be when they all came back together - maybe they wouldn’t even recognize the man who had previously been such a burden on them. He had worked on his hacking skills, picked up a few more languages, and trained in different weapons and defense skills. If anything, he needed to provide some muscle to the team - Nile would no doubt have taken his place as the technology handler of their missions. He needed to find another skill set to offer them when the time came when he would be allowed back onto the team. This was part of the problem, however. The more he tried to find something he could offer them, the more he realized that he really didn’t have anything to offer. None of his skill sets were really that impressive.

Worse than that, however, was the issue that he couldn’t seem to shake certain aspects about himself that he had foolishly thought would simply go away on their own. He had bouts like this of days or weeks (months, years) where he really didn’t want to get out of bed. His head would feel fuzzy, and he just felt utterly and unendingly exhausted. He tried to push through it, tried to tell himself that how he felt didn’t change what other people needed from him. He wasn’t sick or hurt, therefore he had no excuse to lay around all day. Sometimes he was able to bully himself out of it this way, but more often it only made him add guilt and misery to an already worn out mind. This caused a pattern that had lasted during his entire exile in which he would spend a period of time trying to ‘do good’ as Nicky used to say, only to find himself in the aftermath unable to even get out of bed. And it only seemed to get worse the further he got through his 100 years. He started to lose the drive and hope that he had had for the awaited reunion and began to feel nervous and even dread it. It slowly started becoming as bad as the weariness - either terror or exhaustion began to solely define his days.

It had actually started getting pretty bad around five years before, when he suddenly realized that he had no actual idea what things would be like when he returned. Would they even want him back on the team? Nile didn’t know him at all. They were strangers to each other, and she wasn’t a new immortal anymore. He couldn’t hope to offer her help in getting used to this new life of hers, as she had already gone through that with the others. Any connection he had hoped to have with her, would forever be marred by whatever the others had told her about him and by the fact that his first encounter with her was that of pain and betrayal. Quynh didn’t know him either and Andy… Booker still couldn’t believe she was still alive. Although she didn’t heal rapidly anymore, she still wasn’t aging. The last time he had heard from her was around twenty years ago, when she sent him a message changing the location of where the reunion would take place. Large bodies of water weren’t appropriate anymore for certain people to be around, so they would now meet in Zermatt which would hold no bad memories for any of them. The message had come twofold as the same offering he had gotten from her thirteen years after he had first returned Quynh to them,and after, several other times during his exile. A line of contact. He, like all the other times, had declined it. He had a sentence to serve, and isolation was the punishment he had been handed. He wouldn’t betray them twice by allowing himself to serve only a part of that. (He had never gotten any such messages from the other two, though he had heard from them via Andy occasionally during the long separation. He wouldn’t presume to hurt them more by not adhering to what he knew was most important to them. Nile and Quynh hadn’t known him, Andy had gotten her hope back, but Nicky and Joe deserved time.)

The reunion had come, both much too soon and desperately longed for. Also, with fewer people than expected. “Andy and Quynh will get here, it’s just that Quynh had something come up with a project of hers that couldn’t wait.” Nile had tried to explain hurriedly when Booker looked terrified at Andy’s absence. “They’re both ok, Quynh just… has a lot going on. Andy said to call her as soon as we get back to the hostel. She’s expecting to get here by end of week.” Booker hadn’t dwelt too much on it, of course Quynh shouldn’t be expected to drop everything and run to meet a man she didn’t know. Andy would get there when she could, what did one more week matter? It shouldn’t matter, so it wouldn’t. She had promised as much on the quick phone call they had had, and he gave her enough reassurance that it was of no importance that she had hung up with a laugh and a promise to kick his ass for not missing her enough. He couldn’t wait to hug her. He had briefly hugged the others when he saw them, he thought. Quite honestly everything had been getting blurry since he had stepped off the plane and seen such strangely familiar faces. Faces he hadn’t really made eye contact with yet. As he also hadn’t really said much since getting there, the silence had started becoming a bit awkward. After two days of that, and ignoring the fact that he knew he was deliberately avoiding all three of them, he had stated that he had some work to finish up with a job and locked himself into his room. Maybe things would feel better when Andy got here. At the very least he could gather himself to be presentable enough to play this off as jet lag and hope he hadn’t destroyed a century’s worth of work because his damned head was having a stupid week.

**Author's Note:**

> Title of fic based off a line from an old Tony Goldwyn movie
> 
> Come and immerse yourself in another story about Booker and his angst! We love him so much.


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